I’d smelled this one before though, yesterday in fact. I was sure of it. Closing my eyes, I took a few more deep breaths and then it hit – Lily.
Lilith James, the girl who’d been driving me crazy for months. Her and her parents had moved here just under a year ago, but I hadn’t met her until New Year’s Eve when they’d had a huge party at the bar they owned. Chris had tried to keep her attention on him all night and had then stormed out when she’d focused on her work instead. That guy was such an asshole. If she’d acted interested in him, I would have locked her out of my mind, but she hadn’t looked like she gave a shit what he was doing and didn’t even notice he’d left, so I made it a point to go in at least twice a week for a drink just to see her.
Hearing how she’d only gone out on a couple of dates with him because she didn’t want to look like a bitch had been a relief, but the guy was out of his mind doing what he’d done with Carly at the same time. That’s like choosing roadkill over a steak dinner, who did that?
Mulling it all over, I tried to see what else I could remember. I’d driven her to work, the douche had arrived, he’d ‘walked’ into the pole… I remembered all of that and having a couple drinks after it, but aside from that? That’s when a flash of her coming hit me, and my morning wood became a freakin’ forest.
I needed to go and find her.
How I managed to shower as fast as I did without slipping and breaking my neck, I’ll never know, but as soon as I finished brushing my teeth, I pulled some clean clothes on and moved toward the door, stopping when I felt something in my shoe.
Slipping it off, I looked inside and saw a piece of material. Confused, I carefully reached in and pulled it out, my jaw dropping open when I saw what it was. A black lacy thong with yellow stitching here and there like daisies on it. I was sure I’d remember a woman shoving her underwear in my shoe at the bar last night, so it could only belong to one person, because only one person had taken their panties off around me last night.
I had Lily James’s thong…
That was when my phone rang.
My cousins in Piersville needed us now.
If I had her number, I would have texted her to let her know it sure as hell wasn’t just one night for me. Obviously I’d leave out the fact I couldn’t remember a majority of it, but I’d let her know the most important facts – she mattered, and I wanted more.
Thinking outside the box while I was away, I figured I’d text Luna or Dahlia to get me Lily’s number so that I could relay those facts onto her. That wasn’t doable after Luke and Isla Montgomery’s evil twins dropped my phone in the toilet to see if it was waterproof. Anyone who said kids that age couldn’t plan the demise of human civilization had never met those two.
I’d have been home much sooner too, if I hadn’t stayed behind to help my cousin’s wife and my close friend Sonya with her baby while her husband healed from some weird thing that involved his balls.
Twenty days being called Taint would drive even a saint crazy, but the second I said that they started talking about me getting a Tainthood. And don’t even get me started on the graphic details of what a woman went through after she gave birth, which they’d insisted on discussing in great detail every time I was around.
Then, my cousin decided to fill me in on his testicular torture and tried to get me to look at the surgical site which went up the center of his scrotum. TMI meant too much information, but this was a different level of TMI. TMINSTFU – too much information, now shut the fuck up.
And, if I hadn’t been such a pussy, when I got home I wouldn’t have accepted the request to go to our second site to discuss something with the site manager for over a week. I’d come home intending to go straight to her bar, ironically called The Bar, but I’d freaked out over what she might be thinking about my absence for five weeks, and had pussied out completely.
Unfortunately, all of that was true, which led me to now, standing in front of The Bar and trying to figure out what I was going to say. Every time I thought of the perfect words, I’d forget them because I was so nervous.
Reaching into my pocket, I rubbed the lace of the pair of panties that had become my good luck charm since the day I’d found them. They’d gotten me through the hell my cousins had gone through, all of the taint calling, the barf inducing over sharing of information, the worry and the sleepless nights…